Could Arthur and Jenny, really--? Oh, God in Heaven preserve us from such woe!
She looked out of the window. The coachman was driving at a dizzy pace. There lay the city before her in the mist. Again her thoughts wandered, faster than the horses went. She took the note-book out of her pocket to read the verses, but the letters danced before her eyes, and she put it away again.
In the attic at home stood the old cradle in which her father had been rocked, and Jenny, and she herself. The grandmother in the narrow street had had it as part of her outfit. She would get it out for herself if God should ever fulfil her wish. Jenny's darling had lain in another bed, the clumsy old cradle did not seem suitable in the elegant chamber of the young mother, but in the modest room at Niendorf, where the vines crept about the windows and the big old stove looked so cosy and comfortable, it would be quite in place, just between the stove and the wardrobe in a cosy corner by itself. She smiled like a happy child. She could not believe that her life could be so beautiful, so rich.
The carriage was now rattling through the city gate; she would be at home in a minute now, and her heart began to beat loudly. If she only knew what it was.
The porter opened the carriage door and she got out and ran up the stairs to Jenny's apartment. The entrance door of her mother's apartment stood open. No one was to be seen and she entered the hall. How dear and familiar everything looked! Even the tall clock lifted up its voice, and struck the quarter before two. She took off her cloak and went to her mother's room. Here, too, the door was ajar. Just as she was going to enter she suddenly drew back her hand.
"And I tell you, Ottilie, it will be the worst act of your life, if you fling all this in the child's face without the slightest preparation. Whether it is true or false why should you destroy her young happiness? There are other ways and means."
It was Uncle Henry. He spoke in a tone of the deepest vexation.
"Shall she hear it from strangers?" cried the voice of her weeping mother; "the whole town is ringing with it, and is she to go about as if she were blind and deaf?"
"I am trembling all over," Gertrude now heard Jenny say; "it is outrageous, we are made forever ridiculous. It was only last evening that I said to Mrs. S----, 'You can't imagine what an idyllic Arcadian happiness has its dwelling out there in Niendorf.'"